Free (1941) Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham Page B

good. You look
like a girl' The Atkinsons were middle-aged Americans who owned a large and
sumptuous villa which had once belonged to the Medici, and they had spent
twenty years collecting the furniture, pictures and statues which made it one
of the show places of Florence. They were hospitable and they gave large
parties. When Mary was shown into the drawing room, with its Renaissance
cabinets, its Virgins by Desiderio de Settignano and
Sansovino, and its Perugino and Filippino Lippi, most of the guests were
already there. Two footmen in livery were walking about, one with a tray of
cocktails and one with a tray of things to eat. The women were pretty in the
summer dresses they had been to Paris to buy, and the men, in light suits,
looked cool and easy. The tall windows were open on a formal garden of clipped
box, with great stone vases of flowers symmetrically placed and weather-beaten
statues of the Baroque period. On that warm day of early June there was an
animation in the air which put everyone in a good humour. You had a sensation
that no one there was affected by anxiety; everyone seemed to have plenty of
money, everyone seemed ready to enjoy himself. It was impossible to believe
that anywhere in the world there could be people who hadn't enough to eat. On
such a day it was very good to be alive. Coming into the room Mary was acutely
sensitive to the general spirit of cheerful goodwill that greeted her, but just
that, that heedless pleasure in the moment, shocking her like the sudden furnace
heat when you came out of the cool shade of a narrow Florentine street on to a
sun-baked square, gave her a sharp, cruel pang of dismay. That poor boy was
even now lying under the open sky on a hillside over the Arno with a bullet in
his heart. But she caught sight of Rowley at the other end of the room, his
eyes upon her, and she remembered what he had said. He was making his way
towards her. Harold Atkinson, her host, was a fine, handsome, grey-haired man,
plethoric and somewhat corpulent, with an eye for a pretty woman, and he was
fond of flirting in a heavy, fatherly way with Mary. He was holding her hand
now longer than was necessary. Rowley came up.
    `I've just been telling this girl she's as pretty as a
picture,' said Atkinson, turning to him.
    `You're wasting your time, dear boy,' drawled Rowley,
with his engaging smile.
    `You might as well pay compliments to the Statue of
Liberty.’
    `Turned you down flat, has she?’
    `Flat.’
    `I don't blame her.’
    `The fact is, Mr. Atkinson, that I don't like boys,' said
Mary, her eyes dancing.
    `My experience is that no man's worth talking to till
he's fifty.’
    `We must get together some time and go into this matter,'
answered Atkinson.
    `I believe we've got a lot in common.’
    He turned away to shake hands with a guest who had just
arrived.
    `You're grand,' said Rowley in an undertone. The
approving look in his eyes encouraged her, but notwithstanding she could not
help giving him a frightened, harassed glance.
    `Don't let up. Think of yourself as an actress playing a
part .• , I always told you I had no talent for the
stage,' she answered, but with a smile.
    `If you're a woman you can act,' he retorted. And that is
what she did during the luncheon to which they soon sat down. On her right was
her host, and she carried on with him a laughing flirtation, which amused and
flattered him; and with her neighbour on the other side, who was an expert on
Italian art, she talked of the Sienese painters. Society in Florence is not
very large and several of the people were there who had been at the dinner the
night before. Princess San Ferdinando, who had been her hostess, was on
Atkinson's right This occasioned an incident which
nearly robbed Mary of her composure. The old lady leant across the table to
address Mary.
    `I was just telling the Count about last night' She turned to Atkinson.
    `I'd asked them to come and dine at Peppino's to